In an effort to help you land a marketing job as fast as possible, I want to quickly discuss how hiring managers view your application as us marketing hiring managers see far too many applicants spending time in the wrong areas (mainly taking certification course after certification course) which is hurting you from getting a job. Marketing Hiring Managers look at applications in this order:
First we look at: Work Experience Section (90% of our focus is here)
If you have the right work experience, hiring managers will read further. If you don’t, they’ll move onto the next application and nothing else will be read. This section is by far the #1 thing that will determine if you get an interview or not. Certifications don’t count as work experience and packing your resume with these will not help you get hired faster.
Next we look at: Education/Skills section
If you have the right work experience, hiring managers will read further. If you don’t, they’ll move onto the next application and nothing else will be read. This section is by far the #1 thing that will determine if you get an interview or not. Certifications don’t count as work experience and packing your resume with these will not help you get hired faster.
Next we look at: Resume Format/Creative CV
If you have the right work experience, we’ll take a look at your grammar and format to ensure you are careful in nature and pay close attention to details.
Finally, we look at: Cover Letter
Finally, assuming you have the right work experience and there weren’t typos on your resume, we’ll look at your cover letter (if the job required one) in determining who to interview.
Too many entry-level marketing applicants are spending way too much time on certification courses, making creative marketing resumes, spending money on paid resume services and spending hours per day writing cover letters yet still aren’t receiving interviews and job offers like they hoped. Yes, all of these can help make your application stand out, but these will only help if you already have the right work experience as none of this will even be looked at if you don’t have the right work experience. Remember, once again, certification courses are not a replacement for work experience as you’re probably already realizing. Hiring managers assume you already know all of this stuff as you should’ve learned this in school so it’s not making you stand out anymore than your college degree.
So, you need to first focus on getting the right work experience as all of your time spent on these other things is going wasted as these aren’t a replacement or a way to mask not having the right work experience. Your time is going to be much better spent getting the work experience you need.
If you don’t know how to get the work experience you need, check out this action-step guide as this has been ranked as the #1 guide that has helped graduates get an entry-level marketing jobs in as little as 2 weeks. It was written by a large group of marketing hiring managers and myself detailing exactly what you should be doing to get hired faster. The article also includes several ways to impress a marketing hiring manager and goes over entry-level marketing interview guidance as well.
If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me at joseph@jobprepped.com as I’m always happy to help 🙂